A very small green dinosaur walked up to our front porch as I was sitting there last night. I got off of my chair and got down on my knees to meet it. At first it said nothing. Then, with a prompt from its mother, it said in a very quiet voice, “Trick or treat.” I gave it some candy from the bowl in my hands. Then its mother said, “Say ‘Thank you, Ted.’” The dinosaur said, “Thank you!” I said, “Is your name Ted?” The dinosaur looked a bit puzzled. Its mother said, “Yes, his name is Ted.” I gave the dinosaur a second portion of candy and said, “Hello, Ted. My name is Ted, too!” The dinosaur looked a bit more puzzled. His mother said, “What do you say?” The dinosaur said, “Thank you.” I said, “You are most welcome, Ted.” It isn’t every day that you meet a dinosaur named Ted. In fact I can’t ever remember meeting another dinosaur named Ted. And it was such a polite dinosaur, too.

A princess with very long hair came up the walk. I think it might have been Rapunzel. She was very soft spoken. I gave her some candy. She said, “Thank you!” but I could barely hear her. As she walked back towards her parents, her mother asked her, “Did you say ‘Thank you?’” I said, “She certainly did.” Her mother said, “That’s good!”

I was handing candy to a group of children when I overheard parents talking in the driveway, “Do you see the library in that house? I want a library in my front room!” Most evenings I close the blinds in our front room, but last night I had the lights on in our study and the blinds were open. It gave those walking by on the sidewalk a good view of the bookcases along the north wall of the room. I have to admit that I really like having our library in our front room. It is much smaller and has far fewer books than was the case when we lived in South Dakota, but it is still very, very nice. There is a shelf right by my recliner that has the books I’m currently reading on it. The shelf below has some of my favorite poetry books to which I return on a regular basis. Good poems deserve to be read again and again.

We have a section of sidewalk that is made of pavers in squares with white landscape rock around the pavers. It never before occurred to me that the sidewalk looks a little bit like railroad tracks, but one of the children who came to our porch went back down the sidewalk saying “Choo Choo!” as he hopped from one paver to the next.

A cluster of young teenagers stood at the end of our driveway. One of them said in a loud voice, “I can’t remember if we’ve done this house.” I said in a loud voice, “I’m an old man. I can’t remember, either. You might as well come up and get some candy.” They did.

It was our second Halloween in this house and the neighborhood is very different from where we lived in South Dakota. In South Dakota we thought we had a busy Halloween if we got eight or ten children who came to our door. Here I sit on the front porch handing out candy because there isn’t time to close the door between visitors. Besides, it is a lot of fun to sit on the front porch and hand out candy to children in costumes.

After our experience last year, I thought we were well prepared for the crowds of children this year. I had over 400 pieces of candy. I thought it would definitely be enough for 200 children. Our grandchildren handed out candy to some of our guests. They were generous. I hope they learned that from their grandfather. I never kept count of how many children, but after a couple of hours, I was definitely running short of candy to give away. I said to Susan, “I guess we’ll just give out candy until we run out and then we’ll have to turn out the lights.” It wasn’t a problem, however. Our grandchildren had invited their friends to come to our house for supper and trick or treating. Six children returned to our house with pounds and pounds of candy. They sorted through their treasures and gave us plenty to keep our bowl of candy filled as more children came to the porch. I didn’t count the number of children who visited, but I’m pretty sure it was more than 200. Next year, I’ll make sure to have even more treats on hand.

I noticed that after the refill there were even more Almond Joy bars in our candy dish. I had earlier said to the children that I was disappointed that one of the bags of assorted candy bars I had bought had Almond Joy bars in it. “Almond Joy is adult candy,” I had said. “Kids don’t want dark chocolate with almonds and coconut. They want Skittles and Kit Cat and Reeses.” My grandchildren had agreed with me. They weren’t inclined to keep their Almond Joy bars. It was clear that we weren’t the only house that was giving out Almond Joy bars. I heard one child talking to his mother as he walked down the street away from our house, “Here mom. This one’s your favorite.” He handed her an Almond Joy bar.

I don’t get into Halloween like some of the neighbors. I don’t have special lighting or large inflatable outdoor decorations. There are no giant spider webs on the side of my house. No 12 foot tall ghosts are lurking in my yard. But I do like living in a neighborhood where there are hundreds of children walking and running up and down the street talking in excited voices. I like living where parents are spending the evening with their children enjoying the neighborhood. I enjoyed the costumes and the look on the children’s faces. I’m pretty sure that the retirees who moved to the gated and guarded “over 50 only” neighborhoods didn’t have as much fun last night as I did. As they headed out to go home, our grandson’s friend said to him, “Your grandparents live in the best neighborhood for Halloween!” I guess we’re just lucky that way.